Monday, September 10, 2012

When life hands you handmade green, knitted-lace-trimmed pillowcases

As I cashed out of the rummage sale with my pile of Puffins and one handmade green, knitted-lace-trimmed pillowcase, the lady behind the table asked, "Are you sure there was just one of these?" "I saw only one on the table," I said. "That's right, there was just one green one!" called over another worker. The first lady looked at me with an "are you sure you want this?" face. Don't people sometimes want just one pillowcase? "I want it for the fabric," I explained. Ohhh...well, that was all right then.

I still wasn't sure exactly what I'd be doing with one handmade green, knitted-lace-trimmed pillowcase (other than putting it on a pillow), but I was open to ideas. When I measured it, I realized that there was more than enough fabric there for two MCC school kit bags, and it was in great shape, hardly used at all.

The strip that was left, with all its handmade trimming, might make a fancy doll skirt. I looked at one of our 18-inch doll patterns for the amount of fabric required for an elastic waist skirt: my piece was twice as long as that, but not high enough. Rather than make an extremely bunchy mini-skirt, I cut the strip in half and overlapped the two pieces to make a "taller" one. I folded the top over, sewed it to make a casing, threaded some elastic through, and sewed the skirt up the back. That's all I had to do.

This was actually awhile ago...my daughter has given up dolls now (sigh). We have a local MCC office that will take donations any time, but sometimes our church also does a collection project (the Sunday school kids take pencils etc. to church and they assemble kits there).

Sounds great! I'm sure they need them at all times, and it is a great project for the Sunday School, too. Not expensive, but really needed, so even the youngest could do a job for mom to "earn" some pencils, etc.